seriusly crouch is useless right now. Add walking while crouch because the morphball is an horrible tech
When they first posted the gif of the morphball I said for everyone to be cool and that it wouldn't be just a blatant copy of a Metroid mechanic, but I was 100% wrong. They even just named it morphball. It kind of boggles the mind. Anyway I agree that crouch-walking would be neat, and especially that morphball needs to go because it makes no sense in this game, and Chucklefish has too much talent to just lift something so iconic wholesale like that.
i rather enjoyed the utility of crouch walking in windforge, especially when getting around settlements and dungeons without tearing the place apart. i also feel that morph ball would be vastly better if it wasn't for the passive energy drain while using it(WHY?) and the fact it is EXTREMELY affected by hills and terrain, making going uphill painful i had wanted to make a base that was more or less a bunch of hamster tubes connecting rooms together with the morph ball being required for access, but the ball's current behavior makes such a build painful
Logic: 200% You crouch and... ? No bonus, no nothing. Maybe make it so when you crouch and walk... you have greater defense?
True, technically crouched you become a smaller target against shots from other players and you can even shoot back!
Presumably, the inclusion of a simple passive stealth mechanic where while crouched the radius of enemies to notice and attack you is reduced would work. A more complicated inclusion would include light vs dark parameters (because the lighting system in this game is so well fleshed out already!) as well as noise-making (jumping and landing on a metal surface would be more noticeable than landing in dirt, and crouch walking also makes less noise than running). Even better would be for certain techs to interact with the system. A tech to go invisible for a short while, though you can still be noticed if you make too much noise (while running). This would give extra use to the anti-gravity tech, which would produce no light or noise and let you maybe go over the heads of enemies (if it's dark enough), but would not reduce their hazard radius. A slowfall tech on the other hand would soften the noise made by landing, and would let you perhaps crouch or something to reduce their radius. The morphball tech would be as noticeable as crouching and can go faster, but has the potential to make more noise if you hit a wall or land hard. Also probably something about stealth attacks with at least daggers or something. I should probably make a new thread for this, except that there have already been like four stealth threads. Ugh.
I . . . sincerely do not think there would be any reasonable implementation of a PVP-oriented stealth system without a major overhaul to how player interactions work. The easiest thing would be to make it so your character becomes semi-transparent so that players may not notice you as easily. Something like the Starbound equivalent of how TowerFall Ascension handles stealthy crouching. In that game every player emits a little bit of light, like the light backpack. When you crouch you can't move, but that light goes out. On dark stages it is very possible for your character to get their stealth on, assuming your opponents are distracted by each other and can actually lose track of your location. There's also an upgrade that makes you semitransparent which synergises well with the light-out mechanic. Lighting obviously doesn't work like that in Starbound, so the easiest way to recede into the background (which is what stealth in PVP has to be about anyway without a major system overhaul) is to implement the semitransparency thing. There could also be certain techs that still work stealth-wise in PVP, such as an active camouflage tech and maybe antigravity (if it didn't produce light or noise and you were in a dark area with a high ceiling). Stealth attacks couldn't be a thing though.
